The Collaborative Poet: A Day of Readings and a Workshop

The Poetry Society of Vermont and New England Poetry Club are excited to announce our first collaborative event! We’ll present morning readings and an afternoon workshop on Saturday, October 4, 10:30 am – 2:30 pm, at the All Souls Church at the West Village Meetinghouse, West Brattleboro, Vermont.

The day begins with readings by NEPC members Richard Michelson and Gail Thomas, and PSOV member poet Scudder Parker.  Cindy Ellen Hill will give a short craft talk on “Collaboration” and ways to engage. Lunch will be provided (including vegetarian, vegan and GF). During lunch, participants will be invited to “collaborate” and share their work later in an “open mic” format.

This event is free for New England Poetry Club and Poetry Society of Vermont members. If you are not a member, join NEPC and/or PSOV and register for this workshop. Register here by October 1^st.

Richard Michelson’s books for children, teens, and adults have been listed among the Ten Best of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker, and among the Best Dozen of the Decade by Amazon. He’s received a National Jewish Book Award, two Gold Medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries, and his work was chosen to represent the Commonwealth at the Library of Congress National Book Festival. In 2019, Michelson received the Samuel Minot Jones Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement.

Michelson’s most recent collection, Sleeping as Fast as I Can, was a finalist for the 2023 Foreword Indies Award, and the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Earlier collections include More Money than God, and Battles and Lullabies. Michelson wrote the libretto for the music theater piece Dear Edvard: Munch and his Muses.

A native of East New York, Brooklyn, Michelson served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, where he hosts Northampton Poetry Radio and owns R. Michelson Galleries.

Scudder Parker’s first volume of poetry, Safe as Lightning (Rootstock Publishing, 2020) was awarded the Best Poetry Book of 2020 by the Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE). Scudder’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Sun Magazine, Crosswinds, The Lascaux Review, Sky Island Journal, Vermont Life, Northern Woodlands, and Twyckenham.  His poem “The Poem of the World” was selected as a finalist in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. 

For Scudder, poetry is the search for truthfulness, not homage to conclusion. It is exploration—fit of bone in socket, bees at riot in oregano blossoms, ache of old injustice summoning an opened heart, the strange joy of longing, laughter at long-defended foolishness. Family, farming, failing, finding. Foraging for the innocent sacred, patient in our midst. Scudder’s had numerous careers—preacher, organizer, gardener politician, energy consultant, poet—and is still learning from each of them. His new volume, The Poem of the World, published by Kelsay Books, It is now available in bookstores and online.

Gail Thomas’ books are Trail of Roots, Leaving Paradise, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies including CALYX, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Cumberland River Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. Among her awards are the Seven Kitchens Press A.V. Christie Award for Trail of Roots, the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press for Odd Mercy, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read” for Waving Back, and the Quartet Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, and several poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshops, visits schools and libraries with her therapy dog Sunny, and supports immigrant and refugee families in Western Massachusetts.